Obit watch: July 9, 2021.

Dicky Maegle.

Maegle was an all-American as a senior in the 1954 season, when he ran for 905 yards and 11 touchdowns and finished sixth in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy, presented annually to college football’s most outstanding player. The trophy was won that year by the Wisconsin back Alan Ameche (who went on to fame with the Baltimore Colts for scoring the winning touchdown in overtime in the storied 1958 N.F.L. championship game against the New York Giants).
The San Francisco 49ers drafted Maegle in the first round of the January 1955 N.F.L. draft. He was a 49er for five seasons, playing mostly at right safety and occasionally as a running back, then concluded his pro career with the 1960 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 1961 Dallas Cowboys. He intercepted 28 passes, running one of them back for a touchdown.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979.

But he’s best remembered for something that happened in 1954 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas:

Taking a handoff at Rice’s 5-yard line in the second quarter of its matchup with Alabama, Maegle cut to the right and raced down the sideline. When he passed the Alabama bench while crossing midfield, on his way to a virtually certain touchdown, the Crimson Tide fullback Tommy Lewis interrupted his rest period and, sans helmet, sprang onto the field and leveled Maegle with a blindside block at Alabama’s 42-yard line.
The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run. Rice, ranked No. 6 in the nation by The Associated Press, went on to a 28-6 victory over 13th-ranked Alabama.

Chick Vennera, one of those knock-around actors. Credits include “Thank God It’s Friday”, “The Milagro Beanfield War”, and a lot of TV, including “The Golden Girls” and voice work on “Animaniacs”.

James Kallstrom, FBI guy.

In his 27 years with the F.B.I., Mr. Kallstrom helped convict the bosses of New York City’s five Mafia families with cleverly concealed wiretaps and spiked meatballs. And he investigated the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, expanded the bureau’s surveillance purview to include cellular phones, and recovered a half-million dollars in diamond jewelry that had been stolen by a baggage handler at Kennedy International Airport in 1995 and that had belonged to Sarah, the duchess of York.
In the investigation of the crash of Flight 800, he became the face of the F.B.I. in daily briefings as he and other authorities sought to understand what caused the explosion that sent the jetliner plummeting into the waves off Long Island on July 17, 1996 — one of the deadliest aviation incidents in American history.

He may also be known to some folks as the guy who introduced episodes of “The F.B.I. Files”.

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